She caught sight of the loopy Johnny as Boone rounded the table. Leather cord twisted into cruel precision. Her stomach tightened hard enough to steal her breath.
The first strike landed with a wet snap that punched the breath out of her lungs — cane-pain doubled and twisted, the line of fire biting deep before the second wave tore through, hotter and meaner. She jerked, the table edge dug into her hipbones, and her gasp collapsed into a broken hiss.
The second blow came before she could pull in more than half a breath. Another vicious bite in nearly the same place, pain folding over pain until the deep burn merged into a single, brutal throb that felt carved into her flesh.
The third cracked across her ass with even more force, the sound sharper, heat blooming in an instant and devouring the space where the others had already consumed her. It stole her air entirely this time, her mouth open but silent, body straining against the command not to clench her fists. The ache and burn tangled until it was all she knew, and then Kenny’s shadow shifted into view, bringing the next threat.
He walked past her and then stepped behind her with a damned horse whip.
She was still gasping from Silas’s last strike when thecrackof leather split the air — no warning, no time to brace. The whip slashed to the right of her spine, all the way from her upper back to her butt. The pain was white-hot and narrow, and then Kennypulled, the drag of braided leather ripping skin as it scraped downward.
Her cry came high and raw, the sound twisting as the sting gave way to the deeper, hotter throb of torn flesh.
The second landed to the left of her spine, the snap-sharp pain followed by the same cruel rake down her flesh, stealing the breath she’d just clawed back. A third struck just to the right of the first, tearing a scream from her she couldn’t hold in.
“Three more for good measure, and for balance,” Kenny said, his voice maddeningly calm, like he wasn’t in the middle of flaying her back open.
The fourth was just to the left of the second, and it took every ounce of her willpower to stay on the table when the leather dragged down, fresh fire merging with the older burn until her whole back felt flayed open.
Hands landed on her wrists — Silas and Boone making sure she stayed put for the last two, landing to the right of the third and the left of the fourth, and she could swear the yank was different after the initial strike, so she felt every tooth of the braid as it tore flesh and smeared it down.
The heat of the hands on her wrists let go, and they left her there, bent over the table, arms spread to the side, the ache and heat breathing through her with every heartbeat. She didn’t cry until she felt the thin, warm trickle of blood running off her back, down her ribs. She wanted to rub it, but she knew better. Her hands stayed put.
No moving until given permission.
But the men were silent. No movement, no voices, just the sense of them behind her, watching, admiring, probably talking telepathically. Her world narrowed to the marks they’d left and the knowledge she wouldn’t be allowed to move untiltheydecided she could.
Finally, Kenny’s voice came low, steady. “We’ve blooded you, little hawk. Not a blood bond, but a blood ceremony to cement our promises to you, and your promises to us.”
The words sank into her soul, as they were supposed to, heavy and dark. Her blood was necessary. It wasn’t merely about the pain. It was an extension of the negotiations, the promises, the agreements, and the collaring ceremony. A living seal on what she’d offered them — her submission, her privacy, her body. Butalso what they were offering — a haven, a place to submit and be accepted.
Three men who wanted her enough to slice her open and claim her as theirs.
Her tears wet the table as Kenny stripped. He didn’t wipe them away, didn’t offer comfort. Instead, he lifted her, standing her up and gripping under her arms, lifting her. The other two men grabbed her ankles, held her legs out, and Kenny set her down on his cock, spearing her in one smooth, unhurried stroke that punched the air out of her.
Silas and Boone released her ankles and went back to undressing. Kenny walked with her to the sofa, his length still buried in her, and only when he sat did she notice the black sheet draped over the fabric — to keep her blood from staining the leather. The thought made her clench around him without meaning to.
The others had stripped by now, and before she could take a full breath, Silas’s cock pressed at her lips, sliding past her tongue in a slow, claiming push until her throat stretched around him. Boone was behind her, prying her open with slick fingers, forcing her body to accept the invasion she knew was coming.
Kenny held her steady as Boone replaced fingers with cock, the blunt head pushing past the tight ring of muscle until she gasped around Silas. Her back screamed from the whip marks, her ass and thighs burning with each movement, the pain spiking every time Kenny’s hips tilted or Boone drove in deeper.
When Silas pulled out far enough to let her breathe, the sound tore free — raw and involuntary, more scream than moan.
He let her frantic scream finish, let her drag more air in before he crammed his dick back down her throat.
“Absorb the pain like the painwhore you are,” Silas said, his voice as cold and hard as steel. “Accept the claiming, remember your promises, the ones now soaked in motherfucking blood.”
Boone chose that moment to force his full length into her ass in a single, savage drive, thrusting every inch of his impossible girth inside. Her body seized, breath locked, the pain so sharp her vision went spotty. No warning, no working her open.
The raw, ruthless stretch impaling her between them was like closing a circuit — the burning in her back, the welted thighs, the torn sting where the whip had broken skin, the coppery slide of blood under Kenny’s hands as he held her in place. Boone piledriving her ass while Silas and Kenny did the same to her throat and cunt. Pain and possession braided into something bigger, heavier, unstoppable.
Silas’s words sank in, and she accepted it. Agony was a sensation, a promise. Each thrust into her raw ass from behind rammed her onto Kenny’s dick and shoved Silas’s cock deeper down her throat until her eyes watered and the taste of him mixed with the salt of sweat and the metallic tang from the whip’s bite still wet on her skin.
She was a quivering mass of blazing nerve endings, all heat and friction, the weight of bodies and the slick drag of skin in all her holes. The wet burn of the eleven places they’d marked her. Every inch of her was claimed.
The three men moved together, an unrelenting rhythm that gave her nowhere to run. Kenny’s thrusts from below, Boone’s force behind, Silas controlling her head and mouth until she could only surrender to the push and pull. Every nerve in her body was alive — with pain, with heat, with the heady, terrifying certainty she irrevocably belonged to them.
The smell of sex and sweat and copper filled her head, thick and dizzying. Their grunts and growls surrounded her, every muscle in her body caught between bearing the pain andtaking the pleasure they fed her in brutal, inexorable doses until the taste of salt and blood and pain blurred into something elemental, and all she could do was take.
